English syllabus - Gauhati University

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16PAPER 13Life Writing: Biographies, Memoirs and LettersMarks 75 (60+15) [15 Marks Internal Assessment]. Credits: 6In traditional approaches to life writing the emphasis has fallen on the resonant drama of the lives ofgreat people for the way these model lives yield valuable insights about universal human nature. Nowwe look for the element of ‘story’ in this exemplary ‘histories’ and the material conditions under whichthe loftiest works are written. With our new found scepticism about aspects such as transcendentachievements and truth-telling (aspects enshrined in traditional life-writing), we look at problematicissues such as self-construction and self-representation. This paper will enable the students toappreciate the element of narrativization in seemingly linear, transparent, straight forward accounts oflives of significant people set down in memoirs, biographies and letters. The student will hopefullyappreciate the ‘literary’ or constructed nature of life-writing purportedly telling nothing but the truth,as also note the ‘textual’ nature of all lives- that these lives in a way are re-made for each succeedinggeneration of readers through the act of transmission/ telling.Life-writing presenting ideals of exemplariness, is a genre with distinctive features that has beentraditionally studied for the negotiation between great people, the drama of whose lives are regarded asrecords of transcendent achievements made against a host of obstacles and against the flux of time.Now the individual histories of significant (rather than great) people are also studied for the element ofstory in it. This paper will try to have that sense of narrativization which inform all that text, whichunderscore the ‘literary’ quality of all texts (and the ‘textual’ nature of all texts) by looking at variousforms of life-writing such as memoirs, letters and biographies. The texts also enable one to deal withissues of representations and constructions as in the case of Trollope's Autobiography who reminds usthrough his rationalisations regarding his desire for profit that any text has a material basis, and it issalutary to pay attention to the material context of production and consumption.Students will have to answer 4 questions of 12 marks each and 2 short questions carrying 6 marks.Texts:(4x12 + 2x6) Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): Life of Pope Anthony Trollope (1815 – 1882): Autobiography, Chapter 6, “Barchester Towers and TheThree Clerks “; Chapter 12, “On Novels and The Art ofWriting Fiction”. R. K. Narayan(1906 – 2001): My Days Ashutosh Mukherjee's(1864 – 1924): Letter to Lord Lytton, dated March 26, 1924. Rabindranath Tagore: (1861 – 1941): Letter to the Viceroy, dated May 30, 1919 renouncing
17Knighthood; Letter to Gandhi on fast, dated May 11,1933’ (Both from The Mahatma and the Poet. Ed.Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya) Franz Kafka(1883 – 1924): ‘Letter to my father’ dated November 10, 1919 Emily Dickinson :(1830 - 1886) Letters to Mrs. Samuel Bowles (Winter 1858; 1859;August 1861)Recommended Reading:Anderson, Linda Autobiography, London and New York: Routledge, 2001Batchelor, John. The Art of Literary Biography, Oxford: OUP, 1995Chevalier, Tracy (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Essay, London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997.Edel, Leon. Literary Biography, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957.Gillies, Midge. Writing Lives-Literary Biography, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2009.Lee, Hermione. Biography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Olney, James. Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life Writing, Chicago: U of Chicago Press1998.Parke, Catharine N. Writing Lives (Genres in Context), New York: Prentice Hall, 1997.
Page 1 and 2: 1BA ENGLISH SYLLABUS FOR SEMESTER C
Page 3 and 4: 3SEMESTER IPAPER 1The Social and Li
Page 5 and 6: 5Gurr, Andrew, The Shakespearean St
Page 7 and 8: 7PAPER 4English Poetry, Drama and F
Page 10 and 11: 10SEMESTER IVPAPER 7The Social and
Page 12 and 13: 12SEMESTER VPAPER 9Modern Drama IMa
Page 14 and 15: 14PAPER 11The Essay in English: Add
Page 18 and 19: 18PAPER 14Women’s WritingMarks 75
Page 20 and 21: 20SEMESTER VIPAPER 15Literary Criti
Page 22 and 23: 22 T.S.Eliot (1888 - 1965) - “imp
Page 24 and 25: 24PAPER 17NatureMarks 75 (60+15) [1
Page 26 and 27: 26Recommended ReadingArmbruster, Ka
Page 28 and 29: symbolic manifestation in the follo
Page 30 and 31: 30Section B: Non-Fictional ProseStu
Page 32 and 33: 32Option B: American LiteraturePape
Page 34 and 35: 34accompanied by an understanding o
Page 36 and 37: 36examine specific and distinctive
Page 38 and 39: 38Bilingualism and multilingualismC
Page 40 and 41: 40Option E: African Literature in E
Page 42 and 43: 42Option F: Book into FilmLiteratur
Page 44 and 45: Russell Jackson, The Cambridge Comp
Page 46 and 47: 46Paper II / Total Marks: 50 (40+10
Page 48 and 49: 48Texts: William Shakespeare (1564-
Page 50 and 51: 50 M.K. Gandhi(1869-1948): “The P
Page 52 and 53: 52• The Personal Essay: Hazlitt a
Page 54 and 55: 54SEMESTER IIIPAPER 3DramaMarks 100
Page 56 and 57: 56Students will have to answer any
Page 58 and 59: 58Women and natureSection BIn this
Page 60: 60List of Books (B.A. English Sylla

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